Looking for jobs!

Now that my graduation is fast approaching I am looking further in to acheiving a full time job in the media industry. I have been receiving emails from the career advisors at the university on a regular basis. Some of them have been of interest to me and then some others I feel that I just don’t have enough experience for- this is something I feel I need to concentrate on.

Researchers Pool, Countryfile

Birmingham

Ref: 308593

Closes 31-May-10 Contract length Various

https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp?newms=jj&id=33380&aid=15098

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Researcher, Future Formats

London

Ref: 310813

Closes 01-Jun-10 Contract length 06 months

https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp?newms=jj&id=33447&aid=15098

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Local Radio Administrator, BBC Berkshire

Reading

Ref: 297615

Closes 10-May-10

https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp?newms=jj&id=33158&aid=15098

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Personal Assistant to Director, BBC Vision

West London Ref: 309661

Closes 01-Jun-10

https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp?newms=jj&id=33409&aid=15098

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Looking over my degree & future career aspects

I have been searching regularly on the internet for a full-time job after my course is finished. I have decided to look over my C.V and also skills in which I have gained whilst at University and how I feel my course & degree will benefit me in the near future. At this moment in time I still feel I am looking to work in the television or radio industry after University and I know that the area of work I have studied for the past 3years is such a difficult and competitive one at this moment in time that it will be quite a struggle to get somewhere in it. The various websites I have been looking on are; http://www.mediauk.com/, http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/, http://www.mandy.com, https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp and http://www.mediaweekjobs.co.uk/?CMP=KNC-GOOGLE. These have given me the inspiration to review what skills I have already and what are needed for this type of work.

Skills

• Hardworking
• Reliable
• Trustworthy
• Motivated
• Excellent time keeping skills
• Able to work alone or as part of a team
• Confident, able to talk to large groups of people
• Well organised
• Very good at problem solving
• Excellent telephone manners
• Computer literate
• Adaptable to change
• Very approachable/Caring and considerate

Bringing it all together

So the degree show is only round the corner. Times are stressful!! but it wouldn’t be the same if they weren’t. As I am in the Events management group we have a lot of work handed on to us and hardly any people. In the meeting last Friday 5people turned up from the group to organise a whole degree show!!! We hadn’t even come up with a theme so I felt we were way behind. We did begin planning a ‘Hollywood’ theme however, people weren’t too keen on this idea… they EVENTUALLY decided so it was starting over again. And then a suggestion was made – ‘How about balloons & colours?’ Simple, easy and effective!! I started to plan what we would need and began looking for inspiration on the internet. The main reception needed to grab peoples attention straight away so this is where most of the attention needs to be made. On the internet I found a website called ‘Click4warehouse’ this company can provide us with 5.5ft balloons, I thought this would be great to have as a welcoming point, if we had 4 large balloons, different colours representing the different areas of the media we are covering throughout our degree show – Photography, Radio, Installation and Film. However, its proving much more difficult planning as the company did not get back to me straight away and I do not have any idea who is in charge of the budget. It’s going to cost around £220.00 and I don’t have that money to just pay it! Other things that we need will be 4 large posters in the reception this will have a black symbol in the middle of each that represents the area of media, i.e. a camera for photography with their colour around it. The balloons are going to be carried through the building and left outside the appropriate room so people know where to go to view film, installation etc. Then we have planned to have streamers and decorations around the reception and also to have a ‘tuck shop’ which will include lot’s of colourful sweets. It is proving a challenge because I feel the whole group are not putting enough effort in to the planning of it and only a few individuals are helping.

Stop-Motion

After receiving a text off Zoe last night to say that she had no luck with editing the images and creating the stop-motion, we all agreed to meet at 9am this morning. 20minutes after myself, Hayley and Charlotte turned up promptly at 9 Zoe turned up late again, we couldn’t begin to edit without Zoe as she had the memory stick with the images on. So when she arrived we all rushed down to the basement to begin all over again.

We had to choose the images/sequences to begin with that worked best and this was decided that it was the one’s in which Hayley tied her hair up. The movement from her head down was more visible this way. Today was a really frustrating day and as we are no experts on using ‘Final cut pro’ it all became difficult. Problems arose one major one being that to start our images flashed on the screen at the right pace but then half way through they speeded up and went too fast. We also kept seeing ‘unrendered’ on the screen which we didn’t know how to fix. So after a while myself and Hayley took it upon ourselves to go and find Bex. She proved a great help (like always)  and wrote down a step-by-step of what we had to do. Everyone was becoming tired and irritable as we had been working on it for about 3 and a half hours by now but knew it had to be done. Zoe explained to the group that she had to go to continue work on her workbook at home as she had lot’s to do. This really upset the group as we are all in the same boat and have all been given the same amount of time. I really do feel like she left it up to myself, Hayley and Charlotte when we are meant to be working as a group! An hour and a half late anyway and no Zoe …. Charlotte, Hayley and I had finished it!! We were relieved and really pleased. The images looked much better than our first stop-motion one’s and we even included images of Terry in his wheelchair that would flash up every so often to get our message across to our audience. We had spent a long time editing and lost a day of working on our research but I was happy that the stop-motion was on a DVD and ready for hand-in. Whilst at Uni, I began editing the audio of Terry’s interview. However, did not complete so Charlotte took it home to finish, this will also be burnt on to a CD for hand-in, along with our 7 images which we additionally picked up today. These looked fantastic! apart from major editing problems on 2prints. The one we had printed on canvas had a whole section on it, which hadn’t been edited and then an A3 picture of Kelly doing a head-toe kick was just way too much over-edited and made the image look worst than it did before we even began editing it. This was a lesson that I had learnt whilst at school, over-editing a picture can ruin it, so sometimes it is just best to leave it. Even though we have these 2 problems, our other images looked really good and everyone was pleased. Atleast today we had everything ready and sorted for hand-in! :)

Stop Motion … Take 2!

I have just returned home from our photo shoot (stop motion) today, it went really well. Quick set-up as we are all familiar with the photography studio at University and all the equipment. Hayley performed a dance for us which flowed in detail, allowing us to capture her movement. We didn’t wish to experiment with costumes today as we knew we just wanted Hayley in a black catsuit against a white backdrop. I suggested to play some music to help Hayley feel at ease so this was played through Charlotte’s Iphone. This shoot took about an hour and a half and we had taken well over 600 images!! so had a lot to work with, which was always best.

After we had taken the equipment back to the loan shop, apart from the camera. We decided to make a start on the editing and creating our stop motion video. We uploaded all the images to my desktop then saved them to Hayley’s memory stick so we could go downstairs to the basement and work on the Mac ‘Final cut Pro’ software. We began uploading all the images on to the Mac, but got told that we had to leave as Uni was shutting at 5pm. As we hadn’t got very far with this process, Zoe being the one with the most editing knowledge, offered to take the images home and have a go at putting them in a stop-motion sequence. We knew that this would be a lengthy task but she again is the best at editing.

Interim Crit 3

Today was our interim crit in the photography studio with Mez and Paul. As there was only a few students in the group I found it to be more of a ‘discussion’ about everyone’s progress so far and then members of the group giving feedback and just finding out what everyone is working on – which was good. I felt relaxed and comfortable knowing that my group weren’t behind others and that we knew what we were going to present (even though we maybe didn’t need a presentation, but this gave others the opportunity to see how we wish our work to look).

 As Zoe was late, we had to wait until the end to present. After we finally got to speak about our project, Mez and Paul had a few questions to ask, mainly about our stop motion and if we were going to re-shoot as we expressed this was our main worry. We informed them about our shoot on Monday. Overall they seemed impressed with the work and especially with our final room design that Zoe created. They suggested that this would be fine to hand in, as from this they get a clear understanding of what we are having our room like for the degree show. Which was useful as otherwise we would have had to set-up our room, film it, then hand it in on a DV tape so this saved a lot of time. However, we did email Gregg about hiring the room out just incase prior the interim crit, but did not get a reply back so a hand in of the room plan was fine with us!

After the interim crit we had to book out the photography studio and equipment needed for our shoot this coming Monday. This was easily done (surprisingly) as it was a bit short notice and we had the room Monday 2pm-4pm. We then also had to go and pick our canvas up from Dave which was of the following image;

Both Hayley and Charlotte handed this in to be printed on Tuesday, so Dave had done a great job in getting it printed so quickly for us. We went to pick it up from the print bureau and was not happy with it. We had chosen this print for the reason being; the strong bold redness of the material. It really stood out. However, came out ‘orange’ on our print – which had just cost us under £40! Obviously we were all upset about the way it had turned out but then this was a lesson to be learnt. This size of the canvas was perfect and definitely what we were hoping for it was just the colouring of the image.

 SO we decided for the hand in of our coursework we would get 7 images printed, 6 of them size A3 in a glossy photographic paper and then 1 printed A2 on to canvas. We didn’t think that the sizing of the images would matter for hand in. They will all be altered though for our degree show. We were confident with the images chosen and even edited them on Photoshop so fingers crossed. They hopefully will be ready for collection next week sometime, Dave will contact us.

Final Interim Crit

The group met today to discuss the final presentation- commencing tomorrow with Mez and Paul. Myself, Hayley and Charlotte worked on the presentation and then Zoe joined the group later to tackle the stop motion video. In our Powerpoint presentation we have discussed what we have done so far, what we have left to do and shown our final images which are the ones we are going to display. We have also included a final plan of how we wish our room to look, Zoe completed this on her own and we were very impressed. All of my research, contact sheets and room plans are found in my workbook. My blog is a reflective place in which I look over the progression/planning of our work.

 Our interim crit tomorrow is exactly a week before our deadline for this coursework!! The main things I feel we are struggling with is our editing. As mentioned we tried to tackle our stop motion video today. However, after looking over the images we took of April they will need to be edited so much that it just wont be possible for it to flow the way it wished it would. As a group I could feel panic set in but it would just have to mean us re-shooting the stop-motion again. This was going to be more difficult as our models were all busy with A Levels and April was on holiday and wouldn’t be getting back until the following Tuesday. It needed to be sorted out as we need to hand it in with our coursework, so there is a clear understanding of what we are trying to achieve with our work. The plan was to re-shoot again this coming Monday, Hayley was a good sport and volunteered herself to be our model! She is a dancer and we all knew she’d be perfect for the shoot. Was so glad that she came forward otherwise we would have been really stuck.

With the presentation I feel we are well organised and up to date on our project. We have a few questions to ask but other than that our confident with how our work is finalising and all coming together.